


the future is [fe]male

by PureSapphistry



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: DEO Debriefing Transcript, Epistolary, F/F, Is it an epistolary if it's a magazine article?, Kara interviews Lena on behalf of Time Magazine, Kryptonite is this universe's Starkium, Magazine Article, and the omega particle was hot garbage to begin with, in this household we at least pay lip service to atomic physics and chemistry, it looks like star trek voyager's omega particle went through a few rounds of google translate, it's corny but i had fun, so I transplanted Iron Man into the DC universe and made it Lena, starkium's atomic structure is hot garbage btw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:42:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27054367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PureSapphistry/pseuds/PureSapphistry
Summary: Transcripts from a timeline in which Lena Luthor is Iron Man, and 2020 is the worst year.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 5
Kudos: 59





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Luthor family have been mired in controversy ever since older brother Lex's first public spat with Metropolis hero Superman over a decade ago. That controversy came to a head early last year, when younger sister Lena fought her way out of a militarised compound in which she had been held captive for three months and in which her mother and brother were building systems and weapons to exterminate aliens and metahumans on a global, genocidal scale. With her relatives imprisoned forever and publicly estranged by her, her ex-VP also in jail for several lifetimes, her new ARK reactor technology sweeping the speculative tech scene by storm, her anti-weapons stance making her no end of enemies at home and abroad, and her public and unapologetic intrusion onto the world stage as Iron Man, is there anything Lena Luthor can't do? CatCo Magazine's Kara Danvers interviews Miss Luthor for Time Magazine's Person of the Year edition, 2020.

**Miss Luthor, you're the world's first 'out' superhero. How does that work exactly?**

I admire them, you know, but I can't quite make myself comfortable with their lack of transparency. The Supers, The Flash, The Arrow, they all routinely work with government black-ops and none of them are known to us. Well, except perhaps Schrodinger's Arrow, depending on how Mr. Queen's trial works out. I however owe nothing to any government division, black-ops or otherwise, I have an extraordinary amount of experience in protecting myself from threats in all forms, and I have no family to lose or to be used against me. And so I have come out, because by bringing myself into the public eye I force everyone who wants me to stop my mission to do the same, and expose their names and their companies to the people.

  
  


**So do you think Mr. Queen is The Arrow?**

I am confident that the trial will acquit Mr. Queen of the charges of vigilantism he has had brought against him.

  
  


**Would you tell me more about your Mission?**

It is to undo the damage that the rest of my family have done to this world, nothing more and nothing less. I have seen LexCorp subsidiaries engaging in unsafe practices in mining, water and sanitation all across the United States, endangering American lives for profit, and I have seen LexCorp insignia on weapons crates in war-torn countries the world over, and I will not rest until the damage is undone.

  
  


**Hence the rebranding.**

Forgive me for being corporate and pernickety, but this isn't a rebranding. L Corp is a separate entity. Every asset that belongs to LexCorp is being vetted and triple-checked as we transfer it to L Corp's control. Every tech that can only be used offensively - every sword that we cannot turn into a ploughshare - is disassembled and melted down. But did you know, almost everything military can be recycled for peacetime purposes?

  
  


**Such as?**

Tungsten carbide can be reclaimed and repurposed in infrastructure machinery - highway layers, bridge builders, tunnel borers, they all need the strength and heft that tungsten carbide provides. Most of the processes that make armour ceramics for combat vehicles can also make wafer ceramics for spacecraft and aircraft. Most metals can be reused easily enough, once you break through the initial cost of refining them and isolating them from each other. The same for silicates of all kinds. Even most toxic chemicals are only a few careful reactions away from being powerful fertiliser or cleaning fluid.

  
  


**What about the nastier stuff?**

I assume you're talking about radioactive materials. Depleted materials can be re-enriched. It's a slow process but you can reclaim depleted uranium and put it back in the plant to make more power, no problem. Likewise plutonium, though the reclamation loop isn't efficient enough to turn a profit yet - well, that's what R&D departments are for, what can I say? And for full transparency - because I can see that look on your face Miss Danvers, the look that says you're about to ask a lot more questions - yes, we can also rarefy Kryptonite and use it as a power source.

  
  


**You mentioned the Supers earlier. What would they think of that?**

I'm not sure it matters, to be honest. The Supers that we know of both routinely partner up with government black-ops that keep active weaponized Kryptonite stockpiles on hand "just in case". I don't think any Super gets to care about Lena Luthor's ARK Reactors for as long as that remains the case.

  
  


**How would you subdue a cranky Super?**

I have a few avenues of active research. All indications are that a Super always eventually recovers from Kryptonite exposure, but also that Kryptonite exposure is remarkably similar to what would happen to a human if you put them in a microwave and an x-ray machine at the same time - and anything that doesn't involve doing that, or at least keeps exposure down as low as it can possibly be, has to be the goal. Though these new avenues would need a Super to volunteer to test them, something I'm not so sure is likely to happen with a Luthor pulling the trigger.

  
  


**Would you tell us more about the ARK reactor?**

So the first thing to understand is that Kryptonite has been falling to Earth for well over a hundred years. It's sturdy stuff, it usually survives atmo, it's not really hazardous to humans and it emits a very specific radiation signature. So when Lazarus Luthor, my grandfather -

  
  


**Sorry,** **_Lazarus_ ** **Luthor?**

I know, right? Setting aside the fact that the Luthor family tree is just alliteration all the way up, he started out Leo but apparently renamed himself after some more… esoteric discoveries in the realm of rejuvenation. But he was a self-made alchemist in the 1930s so let's be honest, that was much more likely to be the mercury fumes talking.

  
  


**Sorry for the disruption. The story of ARK reactors?**

Well, some of Lazarus Luthor's early work survived. He had a lab partner in the early days, Esther Vanko, and she - bless her diligence - kept notes. It was hypothetically possible back then - in the late 20s, before Old Man Laz’s departure from the realm of the sane - to encourage Kryptonite to crystallise in a toroidal formation that acted as an electromagnetic induction coil but for dark matter. And time passed, and the hypothetical became, well, not so hypothetical any more. The technology is proprietary of course, but the fact is that we can now build toroidal K-cores that are safer than nuclear by a factor of a hundred, and we're not even done optimising the process yet. I truly don't believe I'm being unrealistic when I say that the ARK reactor is going to take humanity out of energy scarcity.

  
  


**And you've miniaturised them as well, haven't you?**

You're asking about the Iron Man suit? Yes, it's powered by a miniaturised ARK reactor. What can I say, I work well under pressure. Keeping the suit hidden from Lillian and Lex was a challenge, to say the least, but I broke out in the end and gave them nothing of use.

  
  


**You've very rarely gone on record about what happened to you in that compound. Would you be willing to speak any more on it?**

Everything I will ever state on the record I have already stated, in the courtroom during Lillian and Lex's trial. The rest of it is between me, God, and my therapist. Perhaps I'll let you join us in that knowledge, but it would be strictly off the record. I hope you understand. 

  
  


**Of course. So when the events of May 2018 were all done and over, you announced the formation of L Corp, disappeared from the public eye for several months, reappeared in a fistfight with The Teschmachine that pretty much broke downtown National City. I don’t intend to ask about those events either - given that Miss Teschmacher is also in jail due to your testimony in court, I imagine the same rule applies as with Lillian and Lex. But what very notably changed in those few months was your Iron Man design. So - why Iron _Man_?**

Technical limitations, at least to start with. I built the first suit out of spare parts and duct tape with very little time to work on minaturising anything but the ARK reactor. The fewer joints or bends I had to put in, the better. The breakout came with a _lot_ of media attention and that was not helped by my L Corp declaration, or by the trial of Lillian and Lex. When that was all done and I finally got back to my workshop, I was overflowing with ideas. The first thing I got working was flight - and let me tell you, I can barely stand flying in helicopters or planes, but being able to do it myself, just me and the sky? It’s an extraordinary feeling. Envy the Supers, they get to fly without having to be wrapped in a full-body prosthesis. After flight came defensive and offensive capabilities - enough to survive in a warzone, because the intention was always to dispel warzones - and then several iterations on software, appearance, and power yield from the miniaturised ARK reactor itself. In short? I've just never really had the time. The model I fought Eve in was version 1.13 - we’re up to 5.08 now, and it’s right here in this room.

  
  


**So I’m going to drop the journalistic professionalism for a moment and beg you to point it out to me because really? That’s amazing.**

_ At this point Lena takes a briefcase from behind her desk. It’s a briefcase like I’ve never seen before, but I can tell exactly what it is. She carries it to the middle of the room, places it on the floor, and gives it a kick. It bursts open into something approaching a giant flower made from anodised black and cyan metal sheets and coils. The handle of the suitcase splits into two and Lena grabs both halves and punches into the heart of the flower - a couple of its petals wrap around her wrists and forearms. She lifts the whole assemblage to her chest and straightens her arms, pushing her clenched and now metal-clad fists outward and unfolding the rest of the suit like a thoroughly broken chest expander. Her entire torso is clad in metal already and it’s only a few more seconds before the suit has entirely unfolded itself around her. _

  
  


**This iteration does look a little more androgynous.**

Perhaps I was already asking myself the same question, in the back of my head.  _ Lena’s voice, distorted through something like a loudspeaker, rings through the room. _ Why Iron _Man_? I mean, it’s catchy, it’s rock, but it’s only either of those things in the context of long and tedious chapters of human history in which women are pushed into the back seat.  _ She activates something inside the suit, and the faceplate slides back up into its waiting position. Her voice is clear again. _ But then, maybe the right way to subvert it is to carry on as I am, known as Iron Man and also known for being a woman.

  
  


**And why not. You came out as bisexual a few years ago, you’ve appeared on several magazine covers in fantastic waistcoats and suits - we even ran a cover feature on you over at CatCo last year, you wore Vantablack and cardinal blue - and you’ve defied stereotypes and expectations across the board. You subvert a great deal of the gender binary already simply by being yourself; why not lean in to the extra dissonance that the Iron Man identity grants you?**

Well now, Miss Danvers. If we weren’t already friends, I’d say this was the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship.

  
  


_ Kara Danvers writes for CatCo magazine and specialises in interviewing metahumans, vigilantes and superheroes. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm definitely mostly writing this as a brainbreak from other fics but also i have like... a lot of the lore in my head already so maybe this'll be more than a goofy oneshot?


	2. exposure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mission debriefing gets tense.

I hate this room.

**You went off-book during an active hostile event, Supergirl, and worked with a rogue agent. This is standard procedure for the kind of debrief that follows a mission like that.**

Why do you have to call me that? It’s just us. Please don’t be like this.

**Let’s just… get through this, okay? At 1537 on April 5th 2020, the DEO became aware of an unidentified threat in National City. A humanoid was hovering at the junction of Queen and Mountain, taking potshots at traffic and pedestrians, and calling for Supergirl. Why was that?**

You heard her through the earpiece when I showed up. You tell me.

**You’re unwilling to repeat her words?**

Rao… fine. She said she was here to take on the protector of National City, to start at the top of the Earth’s defensive capabilities before claiming the planet for her own.

**What was your assessment of her?**

I mean, what point of comparison did I have? Red Daughter, maybe, or Alura? I had to assume she was a little stronger than me, or at least more confident in her capability and capacity. Every other Kryptonian or Kryptonian-adjacent I’ve fought has been like that.

**Adjacent?**

Ugh. Yes, it’s what Lena calls them. Red Daughter, the Daxamites, most of the Fort Rozz escapees.

**Aliens, then.**

Powered aliens. K-adjacent is to alien as meta is to human.

**You even sound like her.**

Stop it. I don’t harass you every time you say ‘copacetic’ or ‘smorgasbord’.

**Don’t bring them into this. So, after this initial exchange with the humanoid -**

\- Reign. She identified herself as Reign from the first sentence.

**Fine. After this initial exchange, what happened?**

I asked her to stand down. She didn’t. Kept taking shots at passers-by, trying to provoke me.

**And it worked.**

I wasn’t going to let her hurt innocents.

**Every time you jump into a fight unprepared, you risk the DEO’s continued ability to defend the city.**

Fuck you.

  
  
  
  
  


**Explain the damage to the MD Queen building.**

Reign hit me. I was expecting a punch like Red Daughter’s, but she was just… something else. One punch broke three of my ribs and sent me through one of MD Queen’s support columns. It was all I could do to stop myself going out the other side of the building and get back to the column quickly enough to keep the building up.

**And then?**

Shock, I think. I know some time passed, I know she kept taking potshots at civilians. It wasn’t until Lena - Iron Man - showed up and yelled at me that I managed to clear my head.

**Shock?**

Yeah. I may not be human but I’ve done my reading. I didn’t hear a word from my earpiece, didn’t even have the presence of mind to yell at people to start evacuating. I think it lasted about a minute.

**How did Iron Man get past Reign?**

Drones. L Corp has a drone plant somewhere and Lena has drones for everything. She was harassing Reign with non-lethals - nasty light and sound patterns - while she was taking over MD Queen for me.

**Non-lethals?**

I don’t know the details. Guess you’ll have to put on your adult pants and ask her yourself.

**Taking over MD Queen?**

Sure. The Iron Man suit had the lifting power to take over where I was holding the building up, and Lena’s drone fleet has a ton of different construction and infrastructure emergency response units. The quicker I could get back into the fray with Reign, the more likely MD Queen - and the rest of the city - wouldn’t be literal rubble by the time she was done.

**But you had three broken ribs.**

Yeah, and there was an overpowered maniac about to dismantle the city to prove a point. Besides, Lena gave me something for those.

**Just to confirm. You took unknown medicine from a Luthor? In the middle of a fight?**

Tech, not medicine, and of course I did. I trust Lena.

**A rogue agent, a self-confessed vigilante, a Luthor. She interferes in domestic operations and in every theatre of war.**

You made me very well aware of how little you trust her through my earpiece at the time.

**Which you removed.**

Yes, I did. Who do you think I should trust more, then? The woman who explicitly asked my consent to use Kryptonite on Reign, or the organisation that has a rod of it in the next room over, ready to use on me if it doesn’t like my debrief answers?

**What was the technology?**

She called it a solar flashbang.

**What did it do?**

It turned me into a demigod for about fifteen minutes, with the power of warm hugs.

**This is serious.**

Yahuh. Lena said to wrap myself around it and set it off. I don't know if you've ever hugged a flashbang before, but that was a very very warm hug - and it also turbocharged me. Twenty-four hours of sunlight in less than a second, she said. My ribs healed just like that, and I went up against Reign again.

**And this time?**

I sent her flying. Even with the supercharge I could only knock her down, and I still broke my entire fist on her face. Hurt like hell while it was healing up.

**What happened then?**

I’d knocked her down onto a multi-storey parking lot. She was reeling, but she managed to stand back up. My fists healed up just in time and I divebombed her through the floor. Well, three floors.

**And then?**

She was unconscious, finally. I picked her up and flew her out of the car park. Lena had patched up MD Queen by that point so she came over and we discussed what to do with her.

**Without consulting us?**

I cannot emphasise enough how important it is to me that Lena asks for my consent to use Kryptonite for anything that might hurt me, or is necessary to keep another Kryptonian in line.

**We have a satellite photo of the Iron Man suit holding Reign. This object here, off to the side, would appear to be Reign’s mask. Can you identify her?**

I can’t, no.

**And the body language on show here. Lena Luthor is very clearly cradling Reign’s head. Can you explain that?**

...must have been when she was administering a Kryptonite skin-test.

**Hm. Where is Reign now?**

Lena took her.

**To clarify. You left an alien several times more powerful than any other threat we’ve ever faced in the custody of, as previously mentioned, a rogue agent, self-confessed vigilante Luthor? When it looks very much like Lena knows her?**

The DEO couldn’t have contained her anyways - she still has powers even when under red lamps and Kryptonite. And, _as previously mentioned_ , I trust Lena with Kryptonite a lot more than I trust the DEO.

**That’s all I need to hear.**

Then I obviously wasn’t clear enough. That box in the next room, with the Kryptonite in it? If I hear it open, I blast my way out of here and I never come back.

**And then you will have attacked a government agency.**

I'm done taking ultimatums from you, Alex. I love you, but if that box opens then I am gone and I am staying that way.

**We’ll see.** ****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have mashed the timeline together in horrible ways purely because if 2020 is going to be hell for us, then it's also going to be hell for our favourite heroes. All enemies from all seasons - aside from a few already locked up - are at large right now. Say it with me: fuck 2020.
> 
> (related: I blame 2020 entirely for my enforced seven-week hiatus)


End file.
